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wedgekree posted:Also in the bar there's that dancing Night Elf on a pole That's Nova. Many of the game's doodads imply that she dances in her off-time. Because loving Blizzard. e: Caught up with the thread. I spent a good chunk of my career making Starcraft 2 mods, and even won some awards and got featured by Blizzard for my efforts. As a result, I have a bunch of random and esoteric knowledge about the game engine and many of the units within, and will be tossing out some Fun Facts from time to time. Fun Fact #1: The story portions are actually game maps, with each character being an actual in-game unit and game scripting tied to clicking things. For example, if you pop open the editor and load the Campaign dependency, you can place any of the Hyperion props or units right next to SCVs and Marines. BisbyWorl posted:Mercenary: War Pigs Fun Fact #2: This is not the War Pig used in the Wings of Liberty Campaign. That's actually the XP Reward model, granted to players who reach certain levels in Multiplayer. The model featured in Wings of Liberty has crunchier textures and a Samus-inspired visor:  Fun Fact #3: The magazine of the War Pig's rifle spins while they're firing. I have no idea why. Kith fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Jun 28, 2023 |
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Jun 28, 2023 10:35
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Also, as a Firebat Apologist, they're just... they're just so bad, y'all. They're not even the best at providing Anti-Light AOE defenses because Perdition Turrets exist and the alternative option is a bad joke. There is no reason to use Firebats in Starcraft II unless you're playing very specific commanders in Co-Op and are desperate for very specific solutions. At least the Firebat in HOTS is decent. Horribly mislabeled, but decent.
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Jun 28, 2023 11:23
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Cythereal posted:That woman needs to see a medic herself, something is seriously wrong with her hips. Her legs appear to be growing out of the sides of her waist, and that can't be healthy. To be fair to the art team, the Starcraft 2 Power Armor has been shown in the Teaser Trailer and several times in anatomy breakdowns to not be "centered" on the user, with the legs especially going along the inseams of the armor and the outseam being where the majority of the suit's bulk lives.  And for that matter, Real Life Cosplays have shown that it's completely possible to fit a real person inside of such a suit:   With that information in mind, the Medic's suit is likely oriented like this:  Which isn't that big of an ask for hips, and the hand articulation controls being set further up the forearm explains what's up with the arms. Kith fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Jun 29, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 01:33
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SoundwaveAU posted:There is no problem in this campaign that enough marines and medics can't solve. Being out of Supply so you can't build more Marines and Medics.
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Jun 29, 2023 09:33
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hell, even co-op rewards high aggression. going on the offensive makes many co-op missions much, much easier: there are still scripted spawns, but those are in addition to the units that the AI creates. clearing the map typically cuts the enemy headcount by half at least. it's why the hero-based commanders are so insanely powerful: you can just walk into an enemy base early on and rip it apart, which ultimately makes the rest of the game easier because you're fighting fewer battles later.
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Jun 30, 2023 21:32
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Speaking of Co-op, will you be covering that at all? Technically most of it is canon. Kinda.
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Jul 1, 2023 11:20
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if the zerg virus is truly a virus, all you'd need is a single larvae to obtain a pure, unmutated sample. that's the purpose of larvae, they're the genetic libraries of the zerg and that's how they morph into any zerg unit (and if they become a drone first, any zerg building) it's pretty loving stupid that Dawn Of War II has a more believable and reasonable "curing the virus" storyline than SC2 where you can toss a larva in a bag and be like "alright let's get your wiggly rear end to the lab"
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Jul 3, 2023 01:01
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Cythereal posted:In Dawn of War 2, it's a much more sensible story for trying to cure a particular toxin, not a disease. Coming up with an antidote to a particular chemical poison is very different from trying to cure a disease. Fair, but this is also a setting where someone was de-infested prior to this point (and it's not like the writers forgot about that character, considering that they show up later and get referenced several times before that). Solving the problem is something that's been done before - hell, Raynor was even there for it. My point remains that SC2's narrative of "find the cure" just kinda... sucks for multiple reasons.
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Jul 3, 2023 10:48
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tanks for nothing
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Jul 22, 2023 06:51
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This intermission is interesting because it's also emphasizing a cut story element. Bisby, do you mind if I talk about Raynor's alcoholism?
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Jul 23, 2023 04:56
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A common question about Starcraft 2 is "what the gently caress happened to Jim Raynor?" And it's a fair question, because he went from swearing revenge on the Queen of Blades to radiating manpain over Kerrigan in the time between the first and second games. The original answer to this question was just plain old alcoholism.  In the original storyline of the Wings of Liberty campaign by Chris Metzen, Raynor was ashamed of how his friend Kerrigan had been twisted into the Queen of Blades and furious at Mengsk's success in establishing the Dominion. To cope with his impotence, he turned to the bottle, and a large part of the campaign was dealing with how pickling his brain in booze for years had impacted him. The original draft of the story had him obsessed with his "glory days" and "drinking to remember", drunkenly recounting re-imagined events to Tychus (like how he and Kerrigan had a romantic relationship) and frequently getting into arguments with Matt Horner due to mood swings and sloppiness. Raynor's behavior would also lead to trouble for the player: it was intended that he would make some rather vital mistakes after several missions, causing the campaign to lead to additional missions about cleaning up the mess he made. This narrative would all come to a head when, after one of the mop-up missions, Matt confronted Raynor about how his mistakes cost lives. Raynor would shoot back that people should be thankful because it would've been far worse if the Raiders hadn't been there at all, and Matt would counter with how Raynor sounded just like Mengsk. Raynor would fly into a rage, Matt would beat some sense into him, and Raynor would realize that Matt was right. As part of this scene, Raynor would reveal (or come to the realization) that the reason that he was obsessed with saving Kerrigan was because he felt personally responsible for letting Mengsk trick him into abandoning Kerrigan to be infested, and he needed to do everything he could to right that wrong and quiet his conscience. He would mention that killing the Queen of Blades wouldn't bring back the people that they'd lost to her, and that was supposed to be his Big Hero Moment: realizing that revenge was meaningless and redemption was the True Hero's Path. He'd clean up his act, get his poo poo together, and the rest of the game would happen as it does for much better reasons. Despite making perfect sense narratively, the rest of the development team hated it because they felt like Raynor's mistakes were ruining their accomplishments (and, to be fair, it absolutely loving sucks when you work hard to complete a mission and the game goes "lol no you lose anyway"). Unfortunately, Chris Metzen felt that removing the gameplay evidence of Raynor's alcoholism robbed the narrative of its impact: if it wasn't a mechanic in some way then nobody would really care about it, so the baby got thrown out with the bathwater and the entire concept was scrapped. However, even though Raynor's alcoholism was cut as a plot beat, a little over half of the campaign's cutscenes were already rendered and finalized, and so some evidence of the original narrative remains. For example, Wings of Liberty opening with Raynor drinking heavily in Joeyray's Bar and shooting the TV in a drunken rage, or where he's shown to sneak a drink from his flask when nobody else is around:  And Matt Horner's subsequent concern over Raynor's drinking when they discuss Zeratul:  Additionally, in missions where Raynor appears as a Hero unit, two of his joke lines also reference his alcoholism: Terran Unit Quotations on the Starcraft Wiki posted:
Some cutscenes later in the campaign make more overt references to this original narrative, but were left as-is or repositioned in the story because they were already finished. Others that had not yet been animated were rewritten, and the result is what we have here today. I will point out when the original narrative's cutscenes appear, and also when the rewritten ones appear (and discuss what they were intended to be originally). As for how I know all of this, the Starcraft Wiki talks a good bit about it: The Jim Raynor article on the Starcraft Wiki posted:During development of StarCraft II, Chris Metzen considered portraying Raynor as a full-blown alcoholic. The idea was toned back, as he didn't want to portray Raynor as a man completely without hope. That aside, storyline that was cut from the game was a drinking problem for Raynor. Raynor would be shown to make mistakes even as the player successfully completed missions. Raynor would overcome his personal demons and find redemption. Such was Metzen's idea, but the development team reacted negatively, finding it unnecessary, citing issues of player empowerment. However, I also happen to have a bit of inside knowledge. I've been to Blizzcon on Blizzard's dime twice because of some of the Starcraft 2 mods I've worked on, and part of that was going to some Blizzcon afterparties with big-name SC2 modders and rubbing elbows with Blizzard developers and writers. As such, I can tell you that the "emotional purgatory" is a post-hoc justification and a total load of crap. The events of the first game and its expansion(s) were intended to have messed up Raynor pretty bad, and Metzen's original draft of the story was all about portraying that. Unfortunately, the team didn't want the first third of Starcraft 2's lifecycle to be so negative since the Terrans spent so much time losing or being manipulated in the previous installments, so the narrative was shifted to something simpler and more empowering. At the time, it worked. Despite Raynor's unexplained massive priority shift, Wings of Liberty was largely successful and its campaign was (mostly) received positively. However, players had the expectation that Starcraft 2 was going to be getting new content on a much more rapid cycle, and when that didn't materialize, opinions soured. There's a good chance that the Wings of Liberty campaign would have been remembered more fondly if it didn't take three years for Heart of the Swarm to follow up on it, but that didn't happen, and we got what we got. Kith fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Jul 23, 2023 08:43
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The storyline was praised at the time because people were just happy to get another Starcraft game. With World of Warcraft's massive success and Ghost's cancellation, there was a very real fear that Blizzard just didn't care about making other games anymore, and being proven wrong meant that they were willing to be kinder to Wings of Liberty when it first released for fear of discouraging Blizzard from making further installments. As for the characters in WoL, almost all of them were fan favorites in one way or another with the only real exceptions being Stettman (because he's an annoying, weasel-faced nerd), Horner (  MEAN TO TYCHUS ), and Tosh (a racist caricature had no chance of surviving a popularity contest with how insanely loving racist the vast majority of Blizzard's playerbase is).
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Jul 23, 2023 10:07
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DoubleNegative posted:All of Metzen's hand wringing over not wanting Raynor's alcoholism to mean robbing the player of their victories. And then, two short years later, Rockstar's Max Payne 3 portrayed just that very thing. Sure, that story got kind of dark and bleak, but it also made his rock bottom sobering up moment all the better. I think you misread, Metzen was totally down to rob the player of their victories - the ones doing the hand-wringing were the rest of the team. He definitely sucks for other reasons, but his original plan for SC2 was genuinely good.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:01
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call-in depots rule, gently caress build times
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Jul 23, 2023 13:10
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rastilin posted:I think the proposed version of the campaign would be even worse than what we got. There are already way, way too many overwrought "grappling with my inner demons" stories for it to be in any way novel or clever; and it lacks the punch it would have if it was a retelling of something that actually happened to a real person. At least romance stories have the benefit of being fun to read, but someone just being drunk and tormented doesn't have that. imo it would have ruled to have Raynor be a total loving loser. just an absolute has-been being like "HEY TYCHUS REMEMBER WHEN WE ROBBED THEM TRAINS? THAT WAS SO COOL. I TOLD MY PRETTY GIRLFRIEND ABOUT IT AND SHE THOUGHT IT WAS COOL" and dealing with the constant unreliable narration and everyone around him trying to prop him up as a figurehead so they can keep the rebellion going like yeah it'd be character assassination to an extreme degree but at least it'd give the campaign a unique vibe instead of being... y'know. that.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:34
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Honestly, I think the Blizzard of then could have done it. Fourteen to fifteen years ago, Activision hadn't really started stepping on necks yet and it honestly sounded like Metzen was trying to break out of his Trademark Corruption Storyline cycle. Then the rest of the team pushed back on it because it was "too bleak" or "too real", and the rest is history. Absolutely no loving chance that Modern Blizzard could have made it work, though. Zero percent possibility on that.
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Jul 23, 2023 14:02
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SirSamVimes posted:Each game has one character worthy of being a favourite, and none of them are the main protagonists. Tychus, Abathur, and Alarak. wologar posted:I like Horner and Tosh. personally cannot understand how anyone thinks Zagara is not superior to Abathur 
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Jul 24, 2023 03:42
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Since we happen to be on the subject: Fun Fact About Heroes Of The Storm: It's made entirely out of Starcraft 2. You can still find a bunch of HOTS code in the Galaxy Editor if you go poking around, and you can copy and paste HOTS units and assets into Starcraft 2 with zero adjustments required. A large amount of HOTS fan animations and fan hero implementations were built in Starcraft 2, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-70WXMJ2D0
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Jul 26, 2023 17:20
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Felinoid posted:Guess they're still mad about not being able to cash in on the DotA train. Oh, they're loving furious about it. Which is funny, because clamping down on their mod community means that nobody's going to ever use their games to make anything unique or interesting ever again without a contract first. If they had just bought popular works off of mod developers, they could've had the next several DotAs in their pocket. The ever-popular AutoChess concept started as a Warcraft 3 map and existed as a Starcraft 2 map long before it was brought to DOTA 2, but Blizzard didn't bother to invest in anything that its community was making, so it got away from them. I could write an entire essay on how badly Blizzard fumbled their modding communities, especially with the Starcraft 2 Map Marketplace concept.
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Jul 26, 2023 20:30
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bladededge posted:Speaking as someone who spent a lot of time in the sc1 and war3 editors, and gave up on the sc2 editor almost immediately between the complete lack of any kind of helpfile and a EULA which read basically as "anything you make with this is Activision's property, not yours", I would be interested in this essay. I'll leave that to Bisby. I don't wanna hijack the thread with more effortposts.
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Jul 27, 2023 19:08
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prophecies suck because they ruin the mystery of upcoming events by their very nature unless the story deliberately calls the whole thing into question, either making the prophecy itself completely wrong (and therefore a waste of time) or only partially wrong (which can be cool if the the gimmick successfully shifts to "how much of it is wrong and how much of it is right") as for gameplay, BisbyWorl posted:Since these missions don't give cash, one type of research in each one is given out by the main objective. this detail is what makes these missions really, REALLY bad for the campaign overall. the stuff you get from the research trees is insanely good, and by doing this mission chain you can get what are intended to be endgame upgrades that can trivialize Brutal missions extremely early.
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Jul 29, 2023 06:52
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CAN'T STOP THE ROCKBisbyWorl posted:
Alcoholism Narrative Reference Counter: 6 Previous Incidents Also Counted:
Not Counted Because The Counter Would Explode:
Kith fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Jul 30, 2023 |
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Jul 30, 2023 10:25
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Well, now you mention it I could use a drink or two. Maybe what I saw'd make more sense if I was drunk.
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Poil posted:Also hurting trains is unforgivable! i regret to inform you that not all trains are good
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Jul 30, 2023 23:03
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MagusofStars posted:YMMV, but for me, the answer is unquestionably Shadowlands writing and it's not even close. A lot of SC2's lovely writing feels more self-contained, whereas Shadowlands' bullshit rewrites the entirety of previous Warcraft lore, the previous triumphs and failures, etc and makes most of it feel irrelevant due to forcing in the Jailer as some genius pulling every single string ever. I would argue that the damage to Starcraft as a setting is on-par with Shadowlands, if not greater. Most of the deeper lore was retconned out of existence, many of the characters were so thoroughly assassinated that they're basically separate people, and the tone of the setting was warped into something that completely diverges from the original series' feel. The Xel'Naga and Zerg got hit the hardest, having their history and motivation rewritten to the point where they only hold superficial resemblance to their original incarnations. For an example, there's an absolutely massive and almost impossibly stupid retcon that's coming up in the Protoss Thinkstone that I would say is the prototype to the Jailer's horseshit, and I will scream bloody murder when we get to it.
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Jul 31, 2023 09:21
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Cythereal posted:If there was ever a traditional MMO envisioned for the Starcraft universe, I haven't heard about it beyond wild speculation. There was one in the works, but then StarCraft Universe happened and Blizzard was like "gently caress it, let them make it. If it's popular enough, we'll buy it off of them and turn it into a real product." It was not, and so they did not.
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Jul 31, 2023 22:46
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the magic rock that makes everyone think you have alcoholism
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Aug 2, 2023 00:05
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ROCK ROCK ROCK ROCKBisbyWorl posted:
Alcoholism Narrative Reference Counter: 7 BisbyWorl posted:I go for the refineries and the Hercules. Automated Refineries will let me instantly max out my gas income at the start of the mission, and will let me save 3 supply per geyser by the end. The Herc, meanwhile, is hindered by the fact that the campaign rarely designs missions around drop play. In fact, Heart and Legacy both completely remove transports from the player's arsenal! I mostly grab it because the Predator is even worse. The Hercules utterly trivializes a few missions in WoL and I highly recommend taking it for a spin in The Moebius Factor. It's a weird gimmick, but when it works, it loving works. Also Automated Refineries are SO nice, goodness gracious. Slam-pick, every time.
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Aug 6, 2023 08:30
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Yeah, sure. Y'know you might wanna try laying off the sauce and getting some shuteye once in a while, eh?
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painedforever posted:Weren't there two of them in that update? Somebody said that he looked rougher than usual... I'm only counting explicit references. "Rougher than usual" can mean a lot of things - Raynor is a fugitive and a rebel leader, after all. Torrannor posted:Isn't there like a time limit on one of the missions? Nope. Sometimes they're implied, but you do whatever the gently caress you want.
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Aug 7, 2023 08:46
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kaosdrachen posted:Essentially Whichever decision you make, the narrative will adapt to make sure it was the correct one. I would argue against that, actually: Tosh in the Nova timeline wasn't planning on betraying Raynor, he just wanted to make more Specters to oppose Mengsk with and Raynor's objection to that is that Specters are "unstable". That's kind of a stupid thing to be upset about when the vast majority of the Terran infantry are former criminals that have been brainwashed on some level. ohhhh noooo, specters sometimes go crazy and kill everything around them. You know who else has done that? Marines. Reapers. Firebats. Marauders. Even the loving Medivac has a blurb about how a pilot got so pissed over some light teasing that she killed two people. On top of all that, Heart of the Swarm effectively calls you an idiot for siding with Nova because she shows up with a squad of Specters in tow, proving that the Dominion is still fully willing to use them despite their risks (again, just like any other Terran infantry). Even without foreknowledge, there's no good reason to make that decision. Kith fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Aug 8, 2023 13:16
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the sooner we have uncovered all of the stone's secrets, the sooner we can forget its missions
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Aug 8, 2023 15:54
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I'd argue that the colony choice is fairly well-written in terms of being equally good and bad. There are decent reasons to pick either option, and they both have downsides.
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Aug 8, 2023 17:23
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BlazetheInferno posted:Stares disapprovingly at all these people discussing stuff that will be covered in the LP that we haven't gotten to yet Stares disapprovingly at not reading the OP's spoiler policy, which folks have been abiding by just fine BisbyWorl posted:Spoiler Policy
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Aug 8, 2023 17:35
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FoolyCharged posted:What's the downside to blasting a bunch of zerg mutants and getting the weird, quasi romance doctor lady off your ship? Raynor's forces kill ALL of the colonists, even the ones that aren't actively infested, because Blizzard wanted to mirror WC3's Culling of Stratholme. Also, Hanson's infestation happens because she injects herself with a prototype cure in a desperate attempt to stop the slaughter by proving the cure's effects. The alternative is fighting and killing a bunch of friendly Protoss who are just trying to do their jobs, which also sucks. It's one of the few pieces of good writing in SC2.
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Aug 8, 2023 20:15
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I bring gifts! Remember when I said this?Kith posted:That's Nova. Many of the game's doodads imply that she dances in her off-time. I made a note to revisit that and edit in proof but forgot to, so I'm doing that now!  The SuperNova Men's Club dancing hologram uses Nova's model, and it's implied that the SuperNova dancer is, in fact, Nova herself. There's also the Hologram Dancer unit that was added later and uses Nova's model and has some... animations.
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Aug 10, 2023 07:17
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I always wondered what the gently caress that was about. Explains why the guy on the billboard has a scythe, I guess.
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Aug 10, 2023 10:50
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painedforever posted:"Nuke Cola". Reference to Fallout, or just a generic dystopian sci-fi thing? At this point, I'd rightly say both. There's also "Nuke Noodles".
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Aug 11, 2023 11:22
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ROCK AND STONE, TO THE BONEpainedforever posted:Maybe respects the material. hahahahahahahahaha
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Aug 13, 2023 10:45
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Xarn posted:Eh, I would say that it was lot more respectful than SC2's approach of "lmao, we just write what we want, deal with it nerds". The bit I'm laughing at is the concept of SC2's writers respecting the material.
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Aug 13, 2023 11:45
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JohnKilltrane posted:So my theory about the crime against humanity that is the "twist" revealed at the end of the mission is that it was salvaged from Warcraft. Take what is said but replace "Overmind" with "Lich King," "Kerrigan" with "Arthas," and "mysterious darkness imposing its power on the Overmind" with "Demons" or "Dreadlords" and you get something that actually makes sense based on the trajectory of Warcraft 3. So I'm guessing it was meant to be the big twist of Warcraft 4 but then WoW happened and it became unfeasible but they just really liked the idea of "What if the evil monster was the only hope for salvation" so they tried to just import it wholesale into StarCraft and man does it not work at all. I'm afraid not. Warcraft 4 definitely was not a serious idea at the time of Starcraft 2's writing. However, there's a very good argument that the success of Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft absolutely poisoned Metzen's brain into trying to recapture the magic and tell the same stories over again. There's an upcoming mission that's particularly blatant about it.
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Aug 13, 2023 15:07
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MagusofStars posted:Alternatively, you can just bring along a SCV (walking behind your main force a little or safely tucked away in a dropship) and let that handle your between-combat repairs. Unless the regeneration rate of biosteel was high enough to actually save units mid-fight, it's just hard to argue for that much of a use case for "slowly heal back up between fights" when you've already got a much faster way to do it. b-but SCV repairs cost MONEY!!!  Actually, I wonder. Do Cellular Reactors work with Hive Mind Emulators? If so, that's pretty drat bonkers. Kith fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Aug 13, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2023 15:17
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